


take down some summer time

by manybumblebees



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Brief mention of recreational drug use, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Philadelphia Flyers, Summer Hijinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 02:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19416913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manybumblebees/pseuds/manybumblebees
Summary: Summer is lake days and fishing and coolers full of beer, the boat kicking up spray in its wake, and Nolan coming to stand next to him on the deck in his too-short shorts, holding his forearm next to TK’s and complaining about his Irish skin, which burns and freckles but never tans.Or: summer makes TK stupid.





	take down some summer time

Nolan’s bobbing in Claude’s pool on a float, wearing a ridiculous floppy hat and a pair of pretentious sunglasses. His nose is white with sunscreen and his shoulders are starting to freckle. He looks like he might be asleep, but it’s hard to say for sure.

It’s August in Ottawa and it’s blistering, the kind of heat that slows everything down to a crawl. TK is grateful he has nothing more pressing to do than to have Raf beat him at ping pong and let Claude mix him margaritas so strong they make his eyes water. He sits down on the edge of the pool, careful not to spill his drink, lowers his legs into the water and kicks, laughing when Nolan startles and slips off the float with a splash, limbs flailing. 

“Asshole,” says Nolan when he resurfaces, flinging his soaking hat at TK. He misses, and it lands on the concrete behind him with a splat as Nolan dives under to retrieve the sunglasses drifting lazily to the bottom of the pool.

When he comes up for air, it’s directly in front of TK, practically between his legs, and TK has to shield his drink with his hand to keep from getting pool water in it. There’s no way to shield himself from Nolan, grinning lazily from far too close with water beading on his skin and in his eyelashes. He shakes out his hair, showering TK in droplets, then raises both his arms to smooth it back, a movement that's all muscle and wet skin. It's pretty pornographic. 

Summer makes him stupid – that’s TK’s working theory. More stupid than usual. He’d been fine, in Philly – there’d been moments where he’d felt like he was losing his grip on the situation, but he’d never gotten sidetracked staring at Nolan’s eyelashes, or the sharp cut of his collarbones, the gap between his front teeth.

TK has a Nolan problem, that’s been obvious for a while. Maybe forever. He just thought, somehow, that two months apart would make it go away – get a little space, sit on his boat in the lake for a few weeks, far away from Philly and from having Nolan _there_ all the time, in the passenger’s seat of his car, on his couch making fun of his _Fortnite_ stats, in the next stall over stealing his sock tape and lying about it.

If anything, it’s worse, now, like he hasn’t gotten enough Nolan and now he’s gotta make up for it, drink it all in, stare at him for far too long and get caught doing it.

The corners of Nolan’s mouth are turned up, looking back at him, and summer makes TK so, so stupid. That’s the only real explanation for why he says, “Jesus, you’re beautiful,” out loud, where Nolan can hear him, like an idiot, instead of thinking it and immediately shoving the thought down, far down, where those thoughts ought to go.

So he laughs. Now it's a joke. Anything can be a joke if you laugh at the end of it. 

Nolan flashes him a blinding grin, says, “Wanna make out?”, and laughs.

Nolan gets it. They joke about it all the time. 

He plucks the margarita from TK's hand and takes a long gulp. “Hey,” TK protests, but Nolan puts the drink down just out of reach, his smile turning mischievous, and reaches to wrap a hand around TK's arm. Then he tugs. TK has just enough time to think he should've seen that coming before he goes tumbling into the pool, chlorinated water going up his nose and the sound of Nolan’s laughter faint and distorted above him. He comes up sputtering and immediately retaliates by hooking Nolan’s legs out from under him.

They wrestle, shoving and laughing and pulling each other under, whole stretches of warm, bare skin pressed and sliding wetly together, and just as TK thinks he'll have some explaining to do if there's much more of this, it's over. They're standing face to face, breathing hard, close enough that their chests touch on every in-breath. Nolan has both his hands curled around TK’s biceps and he's grinning down at him, his hair clinging to his forehead, and the air is electric like it is right before a thunderstorm, heavy with anticipation.

Suddenly, from inside the house, Wayne bellows, “G, the kids are fighting!” and Nolan's grip shifts to rugby-tackle TK into the water, and TK’s grateful, because both those things make sense to him, and disappointed, because now he’ll never know what was just about to happen.

*

There's something about summer that's always made TK reckless. The long, sun-baked days have a way of making it seem like nothing is real, like nothing has consequences. TK does a lot of stupid shit pretty much always, but he does some of his most epically disastrous shit in summer. He’s musing about this as Nolan emerges from the house with a t-shirt slung over his shoulder, drink in one hand and a bottle of aftersun lotion in the other. TK can see the arc of the evening spiralling out before him as Nolan pauses to chat to Raf, then turns and walks determinedly towards him.

Reality is a punch of cold air in his throat and the scrape of skates on a fresh sheet of ice, the stench of the locker room and the press of bodies on the bench. Summer is lake days and fishing and coolers full of beer, the boat kicking up spray in its wake, endless afternoons soaking in the pool. It’s eating his body weight in barbecue at G’s place in Ottawa before they all head back to Philly for the season, and Nolan coming to stand next to him on the deck in his too-short shorts, holding his forearm next to TK’s and complaining about his Irish skin, which burns and freckles but never tans. The sun is setting behind him, turning his hair gold, and TK is making a real effort not to say what he's thinking again.

He’s wondering whether kissing Nolan would be at the top of the list of dumb things he’s done this summer. It’s hypothetical; he's not gonna kiss Nolan. He’s definitely not gonna kiss Nolan on Claude’s deck in front of everyone. But he wonders, if he did, if it’d be dumber than backing his brand-new truck into his parents’ mailbox, or getting back together with his ex for two weeks before remembering why they broke up in the first place, or letting G talk him into coming here – all he had to say was _Patty’s coming_ – and then letting him talk him into four margaritas, maybe five. TK’s lost count. The fact that he’s lost count is enough of a sign that he’s in trouble.

He’d only stepped outside to avoid G mixing him a sixth, the evening getting fuzzy around the edges and the room too hot and heaving with the noise of the boys getting rowdy over ping-pong, bursting at the seams with a whole summer’s worth of energy, full of beer and barbeque and summer stories, exaggerated beyond belief.

Nolan sips his drink, tosses the bottle of lotion in the air for one perfect spin and catches it. Turns his head to flash TK a grin. TK hasn’t said anything in a while, he thinks, doesn’t trust what might come out of his mouth if he tried.

There’s a loud whoop from inside the house and a dull _thunk_ like someone flinging a ping-pong paddle. Nolan glances at the door, and then at TK, rolls his eyes and turns to walk down the steps and into the yard, away from the light and the noise and the comfort of knowing they’re in hearing range of the boys, that nothing unexpected is going to happen.

TK follows him, of course he follows him, it’s like gravity. Two bodies circling each other, never getting any closer or any further apart. The grass is wet under his bare feet and he can barely see Nolan in the dusk until he triggers the motion-sensor light on the poolhouse, throwing eerie shadows over the pool, cover drawn.

It’s still warm, but there’s a breeze rustling in the trees, and TK thinks if he just stays out here, feet in the cool grass, he can maybe get his head on straight, but then there's Nolan.

Nolan, who sits down on the edge of one of the pool loungers and stretches his legs out in front of him. He puts his drink down on the concrete and holds out the lotion to TK.

“Remember when you were gonna take me fishing?” he says, squinting a little into the light, his sunglasses lost somewhere in the chaos of the afternoon.

“Yeah, I remember.”

TK remembers: driving him to the airport at the end of the season, the summer stretching out endlessly between them, TK here and Nolan there – TK there and Nolan not there – and feeling sick with it, saying hurriedly _Go fishing with me, come to the lake with me_ , and Nolan saying _Yeah, of course_ , close to his ear while he hugged him, tight like he was going off to war, not Winnipeg. His lips brushing TK’s neck as he pulled away – by accident, TK thinks. He thought. He isn’t sure, still, after spending two months trying not to think about it.

He takes the bottle from Nolan’s hand. He knows this is going nowhere good, but walks around to perch behind him on the lounger, anyway, squeezes lotion onto Nolan's sunburnt shoulders and starts spreading it across his warm skin, the breadth of his shoulders. He has to brush Nolan's hair away from his neck to avoid getting lotion in it – it's longer than it'd been in Philly, and blonder – and has a minor crisis about it, in the middle of which Nolan says, “So, about that fishing trip.”

“We still have time,” TK says, skirting the question. “Get some of the boys to come.”

He snaps the bottle shut and wipes his tacky hands on his legs, watches the muscles in Nolan's back shift as he pulls his t-shirt over his head. It clings to his shoulders where TK rubbed lotion on him.

“I was thinking just the two of us," says Nolan. He shifts on the lounger so he can look at TK.

“Want me all to yourself, huh?” TK says. It takes him a second to remember to laugh. It’s a joke. He’s joking.

The water sloshes in the pool in the breeze, making the cover bob. The voices of the boys inside rise and fall in waves, punctuated by the hollow clicking of the ping-pong ball hitting the table.

“Yeah, maybe,” says Nolan, after a while. He doesn’t look away. TK waits for him to laugh.

He waits – one breath, two, until Nolan looks away, over TK’s shoulder. Nolan scratches at his neck where there’s a blob of sunscreen TK forgot to rub in, and TK makes another list. It goes: five margaritas, the stretched collar of Nolan's shirt and the freckles on his shoulders, the way he'd looked at him in the pool that afternoon and the way he looked at him just now. How pink his cheeks are, from the sun or the drinks or from something else.

There should be a second list, of reasons not to, and that one starts: five margaritas, Claude’s backyard with the boys just inside, and goes on for a while.

And yet, Nolan’s bare thigh is warm against him, and TK leans in close enough that Nolan’s shoulder hits his chest, and Nolan doesn't move away. It’s a pull, like gravity: TK reaches out to press the backs of his fingers to Nolan’s cheek, which is warm, too, and Nolan lets him, and TK adds that to the list. It all adds up.

The angle is awkward, but Nolan meets him halfway, and when their mouths meet, TK can taste salt on his lips, and Nolan kisses him gentle and slow, exactly how he’d expected Nolan to kiss. 

He smiles against TK’s mouth. “That’s not buddies,” he says, not pulling away, his voice a low rumble.

“Shut up,” TK says, heartfelt, and Nolan laughs that time, shaking where he’s pressed against him. 

He’s still grinning as he brings his hand up to curl around the back of TK’s neck and kisses him again, slow as summer. He tastes of tequila, too, and faintly of chlorine, and he keeps his hand on TK’s neck, as if TK’s going anywhere. As if he has anywhere to be. As if the sound Nolan makes when TK pulls back, an eternity later, isn’t the most important thing in the world to him.

“You know, this is only the second dumbest thing I've done this summer,” TK says. He's worked it out. It’s dumber than scratching up his new car, but not as dumb as calling his ex.

“Must've been quite a summer.”

“Yeah.” TK grins at him. “What about you?”

“Oh, top three, for sure.”

Nolan leans into him heavily, shifts his hand and overbalances, maybe on purpose – TK thinks on purpose – to press him flat onto his back, face to the sky.

“Shooting for number one?” TK says as Nolan fits himself against him. He works an arm free to curl around Nolan’s shoulders, pushes it down the back of his t-shirt, because two can play at that game.

“Go big or go home,” Nolan mutters into his neck.

“In it to win it,” TK echoes, and gets another laugh.

There aren't many stars here, in the city. Not half as many as there’d be back at the lake, where you can see the hazy glow of the milky way on a clear night.

TK’s vaguely aware that they should go back inside, that the boys might come looking for them, find them tangled on a pool lounger with no space between them and half a margarita soaking into the concrete from where Nolan kicked the glass over, hands in places your buddy’s hands shouldn’t be. Nolan’s hand is pushing up TK's shirt and skimming over his abs. TK doesn’t know what he’d do if that hand wandered lower – he’d probably fucking let him. Summer. Stupid. Nolan’s supposed to be the smart one, anyway.

“Come fishing with me,” says TK, before he can think better of it. Nolan lifts his head, but TK keeps his eyes fixed on the sky.

“Just the two of us?” Nolan says, hopeful.

“Yeah,” says TK. He’s thinking Nolan out on the lake with no shirt on, wearing his stupid sunglasses. The hat, too. Nolan out on the porch on a clear night, when you can see the stars, with a beer and a blunt. Nolan in TK’s narrow bed at the cabin with no teammates around to interrupt them and not a thing in the world to get up for.

“That’s gotta be top of the list, right?” he says.

“I’d hope so,” Nolan murmurs.

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to [elenajames](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenajames) for the beta. podfic welcome, as long as it's archive-locked. :)
> 
> find me on [tumblr](http://manybumblebees.tumblr.com)!


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